“It’s about knowing the difference between close and right”…Cowboy Poetry
And the north round bale gate is finished…
The destructo boys (paints) treatment of the “cobbled together” version
The paints had turned over their netted round bale so they could get to the bottom where it’s ties off.
They ate about 2 week’s worth of hay overnight.
They were ok, but not only potentially unhealthy for them, seriously unhealthy for my hay budget.
Took me about 3 days to get it fixed up so it’s hopefully the “done right” version not the “cobbled together one”. But we’ll see.
No paid materials were used in this project :)
Gate was free, left in a neighbor’s yard. Battered but good enough for this job. You’ll notice it’s “hog wire”, narrower at the bottom, then getting spaced wider apart as you go higher. Less likely a horse will get a hoof caught in it.
Pins on the left, but still tied up at the top. Probably should change that to rope binder twine that would break if it needed to.
“You want it to break”. I tied the hog panel to the gate frame at the top using rope binder twine, so that if a horse gets caught in it, the twine will break. Probably need to tie the bottom as well.
Rope binder twine will break if it needs to, plastic not so much. Note the 1” spacing on the mesh of the round bale net, we have variations from 1” to 1 1/2” to 2” depending on the horses. Winter or more difficult keepers, larger mesh, summer and “air ferns” like the paints, small mesh.
Ditto the latch on the far side, used rope binder twine to attach the snap to the eye bolt.
Kona is not thrilled but he’s dealing with it.
Toby is banished to the bale on the south side, which he’s sharing with Junior, who is outside in the south aisle. Had to tie those gates off also, the paints have pulled them down a couple of times now.
Larger mesh on this net, 1 1/2”. Junior is a harder keeper than the paints.
When they get close to the end of a round bale, I drag it into the arena. They move it around like a soccer ball until they’ve gotten every little bit out of it. Here Toby is working on the remnants.
Til next time…
